Art Buchwald Movies
- 1973
This is a very personal documentary about women's liberation by the poet and novelist Sandra Hochman. Against the backdrop of the 1972 Republican and Democratic Presidential conventions, she reminisces about her own life, interviews many notable figures in political life and in the women's liberation movement, and makes satirical jabs at the male establishment. The fact that the media largely ignored the vice-presidential bid of Shirley Chisolm serves as a good illustration of how far the movement has yet to go. The documentary ends with shots of Hochman tap dancing around national monuments in Washington, D.C. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Arriving nearly a decade after Mon Oncle, Playtime continues the adventures of M. Hulot. More than a decade seems to have passed since its predecessor, however. The colorful Paris of Mon Oncle, last seen being slowly chipped away by progress, has now vanished almost entirely. Playtime takes as its setting an ultra-modern Paris where familiar landmarks appear only as fleeting reflections in the new buildings of glass and steel. Alternating between Hulot and a group of American tourists, Tati exploits the chaos just below the overly ordered surface of this brave new world. Again moving from one nearly wordless episode to another, Tati sends his alter ego off to make an appointment in a whirring, featureless office complex. He subsequently moves on to an exhibition of new inventions, meets an old friend at an aquarium-like apartment, wreaks havoc in a snooty new restaurant, and, again, almost falls in love. The most ambitious and technically complex of the Hulot films, it proved unprofitable and helped usher in the financial difficulties that would plague Tati late in life before later getting the recognition it enjoys today. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, (more)
- 1960
This is an unimpressive spy-comedy from director Stanley Donen who inserts his specialty, a small song-and-dance number, into the odd proceedings. Gangster Nico March (Yul Brynner) has been ordered out of the United States because of his unsavory activities and back to the Greek island from whence he came (actually Rhodes). Once on the island, various characters enter the picture, including a local, corrupt police chief. Nico decides to send for a bundle of money left in the States but his double-crossing "friends" send him a bundle of feminine wiles instead, Gabby Rogers (Mitzi Gaynor). Obviously, Nico is none too pleased with the lousy substitution for hard cash, though he does not yet realize he is sure to fall in love with her. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yul Brynner, Bill Nagy, (more)
